


Released (From Behind These Lines)

by weathervaanes



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, American Horror Story Fusion, Angst, F/M, Ghosts, Horror, Human Derek Hale, M/M, Murder, Suicide, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 19:51:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1110857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weathervaanes/pseuds/weathervaanes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles was the first one.  He doesn’t know how it started, what’s wrong with the house to make it like this, but he knows that he’s the first of them.  The next one was Boyd, then Lydia, then Erica, and lastly, Isaac.  It seems a habit, anyone who ever moves into the house leaves someone behind.  But no one’s lived in the house for the last ten years.</p><p>Until Derek Hale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Released (From Behind These Lines)

**Author's Note:**

> Teen Wolf meets AHS: Murder House
> 
> We did not put in a warning for Major Character Death because, even though such things occur, no one is really...gone.
> 
> Please be warned, although the violence is not immensely graphic, there is some within. If you are particularly triggered by anything mentioned in the tags, you can look at end notes for more detail.
> 
> If you do not want spoilers, carry on - if you want a full list of deaths and other warnings, go to the end notes, and thanks for reading!

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Derek literally has no one left in the world.  It’s hard, leaving New York, leaving the city where he grew up with his family and his friends—but his family is dead and his friends never really were friends anyway, and so maybe it’s not that hard after all.

The house in California is affordable, sort of beautiful even if it needs a bit of work, and has been empty for years.  Apparently the last family that lived there was involved in a kind of domestic dispute, and it’s been empty ever since.  Unfortunate, but good for Derek.

Beacon Hills is the name of the town, and it really is a town.  It can’t have more than a few thousand people, most of which are students at the local high school or community college.  Maybe 10,000 at most during the school year.  There’s a preserve there, and the house is just at the corner of it, in the trees, isolated, and that’s good, he thinks.  It’s close enough to town that he’s not going to be all by himself all the time, but far enough that any neighbors at least a couple hundred yards away.

He’s only just started moving in when he hears somebody outside, kicking around the porch.  When he steps out, the guy is standing by the stairs, looking at the new paint job that Derek got done as if it’s something magical.

“Can I help you?” Derek asks.

“Hi,” the stranger says, and he’s smiling like he’s looking at a big table of dessert.

Derek blinks at him.

“I just thought I’d introduce myself.”  He steps onto the porch, hand out.  “I’m Stiles.”

His handshake is firm, simple, and Derek nods.  “Derek.  Derek Hale.”

“Nice to meet you, Derek Hale.”  He stuffs his hands back into his pockets and Derek’s eyes linger on his shoulders, his upper arms.  He’s—what?  18?  19 at most?  “Nice place you’ve got here.  Kind of a fixer-upper, though.  The last people who lived here noticed some of the repairs that needed to be made but, uh—I could help you, if you want.”

Derek arches an eyebrow.  “Do you normally proposition people you just met for work?”

Stiles’ tongue presses against his cheek.  “You’re alone, right?  I mean, you just showed up with a moving van so I figured it’s not like you’ve got a missus and a bunch of kids trailing after you.  My guess is if you’re trying to make this place more livable, you’re going to be rebuilding a lot of stuff.  I’m looking for a…distraction, I guess.”

“Before you go off to school?”

“Oh, no, I don’t have the funds for college, man, not these days.”  He smirks like he’s said something funny and licks his lips.  “I’m hanging around because of my folks.  Maybe one day I’ll, uh, move on or something but not quite yet.”

“You have time,” Derek tells him and then he nods.  “Sure, you can help me.  Not sure how much I’ll be able to pay you, but yeah, you can.”

Stiles grins.  “Thanks, dude, that’ll be great.”

* * *

 

When he wakes up he can hear someone outside, shuffling their feet in the dead leaves, tapping metal, and generally being a nuisance. But when he steps out he has two mugs of coffee and a patient expression.  "Are you a morning person?"

Stiles grins up at him.  “I'm actually pretty nocturnal. I was just giving the window sills some priming since I didn't know what color you were gonna paint them.

“Thorough.”

“I try.”  He looks down at the coffee and, when Derek offers it, take it into his hands with a smirk.  “I should warn you that you’re not doing my ADHD any favors, but I really like coffee, so.”  He takes a sip and gestures towards the sill.  “So there’s this and I know that staircase on the back of the house is severely, like, trashed.  So, if you were planning on fixing that up, I could watch stuff around here.  There’s a lumber store on the corner of 3rd and Main.”

"How do you know about the staircase in the back?"

Stiles turns back to his work.  "I knew the previous owners."

Derek frowns.  “That was a while ago.  You were a kid.”

“They watched me—babysat me.  I, uh, spent time with their son.”

“Must’ve been tough when they moved away.”  Derek clears his throat.  He’d been told that the son of the family had disappeared and the father had moved away, distraught with grief over losing his family.  The boy was never found.  “I’m sorry,” he says softly.  “I’ll—I’ll be back.  I don’t really have anything to steal but—”

Stiles rolls his eyes.  “Don’t worry, I’m not interested in your stuff.”

Derek snorts.  "I meant just keep an eye on the place alright?"

Just like that the boy's smile is back.  "Sure thing, man."

Derek isn’t gone that long, but he returns with cans of paint and enough wood to rebuild the staircase and attach it correctly to the back door of the kitchen.  When he parks the car, Stiles isn’t out front.

“I should tell you,” he says when he enters the house, “that if I get in trouble with your folks for this, I will be blaming it all on you.”

He pokes his head out of the hallway that leads down towards the bedrooms.  “What?  No, they’re cool.  So cool.  Cold as ice, really.”

"Not that you aren't a huge help but…  Don't you have something better to do?"

Stiles has very bright eyes that Derek could easily get distracted by.  "You mean don't I have any friends?"

Derek shrugs.

“Funny story, actually,” Stiles says.  He’s walking forward now, wiping his hands off on some sort of dishrag that Derek doesn’t remember owning.  He tucks it into his back pocket.  “The short answer is no.”

“What’s the long answer?”

“I’m kind of an acquired taste.  Okay, actually the long answer is yes, I have friends, just not any that are as interesting as this is right now.”

Derek shrugs it off and let's it go for the moment.  They spend the day working side by side and he learns both lots and nothing at all about the teenager.  He’s intelligent, knows a lot about a lot, and apparently could go on for hours about why he prefers Beacon Hills over larger cities, not the smallest of reasons being what Stiles calls the threat of violence.

“It’s just better here,” he says when they’re out back and the sun is setting.  “I thought for a while I might like to go to Los Angeles or New York, but then you hear about the crimes, the rape and the murder and—”  He shrugs.  “I like being here.”

"You know," Derek says after a bit, "when people say something so much—”

"They mean the opposite?" Stiles grins and pats Derek on the shoulder.  "No, dude, I'm fine."  He looks at the watch on his wrist for a moment and then smirks to himself.  “I, uh, should get going probably.  Tomorrow?”

“I have to go job hunting, actually,” Derek tells him.  “But tomorrow morning, just until about 11, sure.”

Stiles beams.  “See you then.”

Stiles drops by a lot.  He comes over when Derek’s finishing up breakfast, stays until Derek either says he doesn’t have to stick around anymore or until the sun is low in the sky, and he’s always—well, he’s always Stiles.  He’s eager and energetic and youthful, playful in his own kind of way.  He has to wonder why he’s never seen Stiles’ parents, why Stiles doesn’t even mention them, and why Stiles seems to be spending absolutely no time with any of his supposed friends.

The back staircase is structurally sound but not very pretty when Stiles taps his foot and says, “I, uh, actually made plans tonight, you know?  Not that you were inviting me over or anything but I’m going out with some friends.”

He doesn’t know why he’s thrown by that, why he just expected Stiles would be around.  But Derek nods, says, “Of course, go have fun,” and apparently Stiles does—there’s a girl named Lydia involved, that much he knows.  He also knows that Stiles is at least half in love with her.

When he wakes the next morning on his couch, though, Stiles is there, handing him a mug of coffee.  “Good morning, sunshine.  And how are you this morning?”

Derek blinks, rubs his eyes with his free hand.  “Hmph.”

"You look like shit," Stiles grins.  “Hot shit but still."

Derek is too flustered by being suddenly awake to blush at the comment.  "I couldn't sleep. Not well."

"Maybe because you fell asleep on the couch.”

"There were noises—I think I heard talking but the TV was off."

Stiles frowns.  “That’s—weird.  That’s very weird.  You know, in this house it’s probably just the pipes or something.”

Derek nods.  “Yeah, probably.  How, uh, how was your evening?”

“Oh, you know.  Eventful.”

“What did you and Lydia do?”

He shrugs one shoulder.  “This and that.”

"Did she—I mean do you think you've been un-friend-zoned or—?”

"Okay first of all, trust me, you do not want to hear me relay the two and a half hour dissection of why friend-zoning isn't a thing. Trust me it does a number on you. But Lydia is…  She watches my back and she's the sister I never got to have."  He sits down next to Derek, puts his feet on the coffee table.  “We’re not…a thing.  Never were, never will be.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Apart from the fact that she’s far too perfect to be slumming it with me on her arm, I have different interests.”  He looks pointedly over his mug as he takes a sip and Derek looks towards his own cup.

"I thought—”

"That I was in love with her? So did I. Turns out there's idolizing someone and then you have to put up with them at their worst with no attraction."  He slurps the coffee dramatically.  “So, we painting that staircase today or what?”

* * *

 

The first time Stiles kisses him, Derek’s been expecting it.  A kid like Stiles, expressive and energetic, it’s not hard to tell what he wants.  So when he leans in over takeout one night, Derek isn’t surprised by it.  He is, however, surprised by his own reaction.

He’s not really given much thought to kissing Stiles, what it would mean, how it would feel, but that doesn’t matter because it’s happening anyway.  He’s kissing Stiles, hands on his cheeks, kissing him sweetly and slowly, and Stiles is smiling into it.

“I knew it,” he says.

“Knew what?”

“That you wanted to kiss me just as much as I wanted to kiss you.”

Derek smirks.  “Stiles—”

“Don’t _Stiles_ me.  You did.  You do.  And now you have.”  He licks his lips.  “You wanna try it again?”

“Was that your first kiss?”

Stiles laughs.  “No,” he says, and he doesn’t say anything more.

Derek wants to kiss him again, just for that.  Instead, he sits back and doesn’t do anything.

“I have to get going,” Stiles says then.  He stands, but only so that he can tower over Derek when he leans in to kiss him again.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

They see each other, in fact, every day for the next week.  The house is fine now, perfect really, but he keeps dropping by.  They eat together, they watch movies together, and one night, Derek comes home to find his whole house smelling like spaghetti sauce.

“I just used what you had in the house,” Stiles calls from the kitchen.  “So the meatballs are actually turkey sausage but whatever it’ll still be delicious.  Plus there’s bread and, uh, a bottle of wine that you have here, which is interesting.”

Derek takes the bottle from him when he gets into the kitchen.  “You’re underage.”

“I’m technically an adult.  Hell, I’m a year past adulthood.”  He smirks.  “I feel like I’m actually even older than you.”

“Pretty sure you’re not,” Derek says, but he’s smiling.  “Maturity doesn’t mean jack over age, not in the real world.”

“I would beg to differ.”  He looks down at the bottle again and then turns back to the stove.  “Pasta’s done if you want to serve it up.  I’ll grab a spoon for the sauce.”  It says a lot about him, Derek thinks, that he knows exactly which drawer to go to in order to find the black, plastic spoon that Derek uses for meals like this. 

Stiles serves them both and puts it down on the counter instead of leading Derek towards the television.

“I thought, maybe for once, we could have an actual conversation over dinner.”

Derek arches an eyebrow.  “Sounds…interesting.”

It’s not so much a conversation as companionable silence with varied degrees of casual murmurs and comments about the food.  It’s good, though, nice, and when they go to the sink to wash up, Stiles keeps his hip against Derek’s the whole time.

It’s pleasant.

It’s even better when, as they’re heading back towards the front of the house, Stiles grabs his wrist and keeps him still against the wall, leaning in to kiss him.  They stand there for a long time, just kissing, touching, and eventually Stiles ducks his hands down to Derek’s waistband.

“Stiles—”

“It’s okay,” he mutters.  “I know you want to.  It’s not like I don’t notice the way you look at me.”  He kisses Derek longer this time, slower, deeper, and unbuttons his jeans.

“You—you’re so young and your parents—”

“Don’t talk about my parents when I’m about to suck you off,” Stiles says against his throat and sure enough, he drops to his knees.  Derek’s head hits the wall and his eyes close.

“Stiles—”  He knows he shouldn’t, knows intellectually that his dumb attraction to this kid is so wrong, is so bad.  He has parents and a future and yet here he is, between Derek’s legs, pulling his jeans down and fitting his mouth over the bulge in his underwear.  “Shit, Stiles, you don’t have to—”

“I want to,” Stiles mutters, hands on his hips.  “Let me.”

Derek groans, eyes slipping closed again, and Stiles pulls down the waistband of his boxer briefs.  He—his mouth—he just slides down over Derek’s cock like he doesn’t care about air at all and, God, it feels—

He has to look, watch Stiles as he licks and sucks and then he’s pulling off, licking over the slit in the head, and Derek puts his hands into Stiles’ hair, twists and moans.  He kisses the underside, licks up and down and across every bit of skin, and then he’s going down again, and Derek just sees bright lights popping behind his eyelids even though he hasn’t even come yet.

When he feels the tension building, when every muscle in his body is tensing and his balls are aching, but tries to tell him, tries to pull him away, but Stiles grabs onto Derek’s thighs and stays where he is.  He comes down Stiles’ throat, shaking.

“Shit,” he mutters when he’s aware enough to form words.

Stiles is standing, forehead against Derek’s shoulder, and his own hand down his pants.

“I—let me—”  He pushes Stiles’ jeans down a little bit farther, covering Stiles’ hand with his own.  He’s hard, and his mouth is sliding against Derek’s neck when he moans.

Derek is efficient, good at jerking guys off, at jerking off in general, and Stiles is thrusting into his fist and moaning in just moments.  When he comes, he clings to Derek, presses in close and doesn’t let go.  It’s actually kind of comforting, the warmth and weight of another person.  He closes his eyes and holds onto Stiles too, pressing his nose into his hair.

“Can I stay here?” Stiles asks.  “For the night?”

Derek swallows tightly.  “What about your parents?”

Stiles burrows himself deeper into Derek’s arms.  “They won’t mind.”

He’s not good for Stiles, that he knows.  He’s too old, too broken, and he just doesn’t have the emotional capacity to fall in love with a teenager but he’s doing it anyway.  He’s falling for Stiles, has been for a long time, and it’s going to be the death of him.

“Yeah,” he mutters.  “You can stay.”

* * *

 

“Maybe I should’ve thought of that,” Isaac says with a roll of his eyes.  He’s standing in the kitchen, on the opposite side of the counter, and Derek is eating in front of the TV, a bagel and scrambled eggs.

Stiles glares at Isaac.  “Thought of what?”

“Seducing him.  It could work for me, you know; he looks like he could bottom every once in a while—”

Stiles has to look over at Derek again before he disappears, dragging Isaac back around towards the laundry room.  It won’t matter anyway.  Derek wouldn’t be able to see them now if he wanted to.  “I didn’t seduce him.  We fell in love.”

Isaac arches an eyebrow.  “Is that what you call it?  So does that mean I won’t be your fuck buddy anymore, now that you have flesh-and-blood over there?”

Stiles wants to slap him.  “You and I were never together.”

“It’s a wonder, considering.  I mean, Boyd and Erica, Isaac and Stiles, that’s how it was gonna work out, wasn’t it?”

“You’re an idiot if you think we were ever meant to be together.”

“You’re demented if you think you and Mr. Heartbeat over there are.” 

“What about Lydia?” Stiles asks.  “You and Lydia—”

Isaac smirks.  “Stiles, hate to go around breaking hearts but you’re right.  I don’t love you and I certainly don’t love Lydia.”

“So why are you upset?”

Isaac steps closer, hand on his cheek.  “If you kill him, he’ll never forgive you.”

Stiles blinks.  “So you don’t love me, but you want me to yourself anyway?”

“That’s about the gist of it, sure.  Also, kind of jealous you didn’t invite me into bed with you guys last night.  Looked like a lot of fun.  He’s got a thing for sucking cock, huh?”

Stiles does slap him this time, hard, and Isaac doesn’t even wince.

“Years of learning how to take a punch,” he mutters.

“Don’t say shit about him, okay?  I—I love him.  And he loves me and you can’t—”

“You don’t have the heart to kill him,” Isaac hisses, “and if you’re so in love with him you won’t be able to watch him walk away.”

“Stiles?”

He turns towards Derek’s voice at the front of the house.  “Don’t fucking appear to him or I swear to God I will—”

“What?” Isaac taunts.  “Kill me?”

* * *

 

Stiles was the first one.  He doesn’t know how it started, what’s wrong with the house to make it like this, but he knows that he’s the first of them.  The next one was Boyd, then Lydia, then Erica, and lastly, Isaac.  It seems a habit, anyone who ever moves into the house leaves someone behind.  But no one’s lived in the house for the last ten years.

Until Derek Hale.

Lydia, of course, was the first one to bring up clear cut strategies on how to kill Derek. Stiles, of course, wasn't having any of it.

She leans against her bed, a remnant of her life with iron posts rusting in the basement.  "So you're just going to carry on like this. Indefinitely. What if he's serious about you? Wants to meet your parents, get married, or I don’t know…  Leave the house with you?"

So maybe Stiles hasn't thought this through. Maybe it's easier to tell her she's bleeding again so that the red will bloom on her belly and mat the floral print summer dress against her skin. She glares at him and storms past, the door frames whining in her wake.

It’s not easy, Stiles knows that, and it will never be easy.  There is no way for Stiles to come back to life, no way for Stiles to live again, but Derek—Derek is only 25, he has the rest of his life ahead of him, and he’s going to do great thing, real things.  Maybe the best thing to do is for Stiles to disappear and let Derek think that he’s never going to come back.

He’s so selfish, though, so desperate for Derek’s hands and his mouth and his words, the way he talks to Stiles, the way he touches Stiles.  He doesn’t think he can stay away from that.

“It was never going to end well,” Erica says, leaning against the doorway.  “Falling in love with a live one.”

"Why do I get the impression," he says through gritted teeth, "that you fuckers are enjoying this?"

She grins and tugs at her hair.  "If we can't make the house suffer, Stiles, you're a close second."

“I can’t kill him.”

“Boyd would do it for you.  After what you did for him.”

“Boyd settled his debt with me a long time ago, when Lydia came here.”  He swallows, runs his fingers through his hair.  “And no, no, that’s not what I want.  If he died he—he would hate me, he would be disgusted with me.  I can’t do anything.  None of us can do anything.  Somehow, I have to disappear out of his life.  Just…not yet.”

For a moment Erica's face turns soft. She's always said death suits her. She finds it liberating. But sometimes Stiles can see a quite girl hiding behind her eyes. Living unnoticed, dying slowly and alone at the bottom of the stairs.

"Well," she says as the joie de mourir returns to her eyes, "if there's one thing you have it's time."

That’s ultimately true, Stiles supposes.  He has time to spend apart from Derek, to sort things out and figure out how he’s going to successfully take care of things.  There is a way where he doesn’t have to leave Derek’s life and where Derek doesn’t have to die, but it involves telling him the truth about the house, about the things living there that he knows nothing about.  And doing that would require full participation from the rest of them.

He stays away for a day.  Just a day so that Derek doesn’t get nervous.  He’s told Derek before that he doesn’t have a cell phone, that he doesn’t need one and he doesn’t want one, but Derek also doesn’t know where he supposedly “lives”, so there’s no way for Derek to go looking for him.  He isn’t sure if that’s a good thing for a bad thing.

Derek spends most of that day at work, but when he comes home and calls Stiles’ name, Stiles goes into the basement and stays there, sits down next to Lydia and says, “I’m sorry.”

She rolls her eyes at him.  “Don’t apologize.”

“Okay.”

Derek eventually seems to accept that Stiles isn’t in the house, but it’s late afternoon and so he starts cooking dinner.  Boyd comes downstairs and tells them, “He’s cooking enough for two.”

Stiles closes his eyes.  “Do you think he really…?”

“Yes,” Erica tells him, appearing next to Boyd.  “He does.”  She loops her arm with his.

“I told him I’d do it,” Lydia says, brushing hair off of her shoulder.

“I would,” Boyd adds, but he doesn’t sound all that excited about it.

Stiles shakes his head.  “No one is laying a finger on him.  He deserves to live.”

“And if the house wants him?”

“I’ll help him get out.”  He lifts his head.  “We all will.”

“Interesting,” Isaac says dryly as he steps dramatically out of the shadows, “you just volunteering us for Save-Derek duty.  Why didn’t Boyd catch Erica when she fell, why didn’t we fight off those guys who killed Lydia—why didn’t any of you kill my _dad_?”

Stiles stands up.  “That’s not fair,” he says angrily, “I offered.  I offered to help you—you didn’t want me to lay a hand on him!”

Lydia pulls herself up too, crossing her arms.  “We can’t fight about this.  Everything that happened has already happened, that doesn’t mean we can’t prevent new things from happening.  Do we agree?”  She looks pointedly at Isaac.

“What makes him so special?”

“You already know the answer to that one, man,” Boyd tells him.  “We should keep him alive, for Stiles’ sake.”

It’s mostly decided then anyway that whatever they do, they have to make sure Derek doesn’t die, not while he’s there.

* * *

 

Stiles is in Derek’s kitchen when he eventually wanders in, cooking omelets and waiting for him to enter.  Derek moves in behind him, wraps his arms around his waist.

“Good morning,” he mutters.

Stiles turns his face, kisses his cheek.  “Hi, there.  There’s bacon and cheese and I put mushrooms in mine but if you want that one we can trade, I don’t really care.”

Derek exhales slowly, hands on Stiles’ hips.  “I don’t care either.  How was your day yesterday?”

“Oh, yeah, it was—okay.”  He slips their breakfast onto plates and takes them to the counter.  “I was just hanging out with some friends, figured you wouldn’t miss me that much.  C’mere,” he mutters, and he pulls Derek close, kissing him.

“It’s a nice morning,” Derek tells him.  “Let’s sit on the porch.”

They take their plates out to the chairs on the porch with the little glass table, but they’re only there for maybe ten minutes before Derek frowns, looking down at his phone.

“What is it?” Stiles asks.

“I get police updates on my phone for the county and, uh, there was a boy.”  He scratches the back of his neck.  “There was a boy found dead in the woods this morning.”

Without even looking up, Stiles knows that Lydia is standing in front of the porch.  He closes his eyes, can’t pray hard enough that the boy didn’t die on the property, that he was far enough away at the time—

But no, when he lifts his eyes to Lydia, there’s someone else standing with her.  He’s young, 17 at most, Isaac’s age, and has floppy black hair and big brown eyes.  He’s wearing a backpack, his legs are scraped up, and his shirt is torn.

“He fell,” Lydia says.  “Down that rock that leads up to the cliff at the edge of the property.”

“A hiking accident,” Stiles says, and Derek nods.

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

He licks his lips and tries to pry his eyes away from the boy's, they look so sad and scared. "It could happen to anyone."

"I guess so," Derek says with a frown.  “It was really close by I think—”

"Why does that matter?" Stiles asks, a bit more quickly than he should have perhaps.

"Maybe I could've heard or—or done something."

"I didn't scream," the boy says quietly. It breaks Stiles' heart a bit more.  "I don't remember screaming."

"No," Stiles says with conviction even though he doesn't know who he is speaking to.  "There wasn't anything you could have done."  He grabs for Derek’s hand and kisses his shoulder.  “Derek.”

“Hm?”

“I—I have to go home for a little while, okay?  But I’ll be back really soon.”

Derek nods slowly and Stiles grabs onto his face, kissing him soundly.

“I’ll be back before you even notice I’m gone.”

They gather in the attic because it has always felt safe. It was Stiles' crawl space when he was a boy and no one has died here yet. The boy's name is Scott and, in the end, he was trying to prove a point.

"My girlfriend’s family are all hunters. Like, go out in the woods for a week and come back with a ton of game type hunters. And I just—they don't like me very much and she was…  I just wanted to make her proud."

"You're not carrying any weapons," Boyd points out.

Scott blinks up.  "Well I wasn't going to kill anything. I just wanted to prove I could be out there."

"Well I guess it wasn't going to work out anyway," Lydia says, rather cold.

"Lyds, be quiet. Look, it wasn't your fault, like I said it could have happened to anyone."

"I want to see my mom."

"Trust me she won't want to see you," Erica says, but it sounds gentle.  “A clean break is easier."

Stiles knows the boy is going to cry even before he eyes become wet.  Erica, who is far more maternal than the rest of them, hugs Scott and lets him cry into her shoulder.  He mutters things they all did, about not being able to believe that he’s really dead, wondering why he’s still here, why there isn’t another side to move onto.

“It’s the land,” Isaac says, and he’s standing in the corner, bitter still.  “The land holds onto souls.”

Stiles feels the memory of a shiver down his spine when he sees Isaac looking at Scott. Maybe the others can't tell but he's existed too long. There's no question that maybe Isaac doesn't realize it himself, but he's marked Scott for his own. His eyes might as well be hands on the boy's body. Stiles realizes that Scott is the only one with no obvious bitterness, it showed so quickly in the rest and Isaac most of all.

Scott looks down at his ripped clothing and slips the pack—which came with him just like the clothes—off and onto the floor.  “Is there—is there any way for me to clean up?”

Isaac nods.  “Stiles can go distract his boy downstairs and I’ll take you into one of the bathrooms.  Erica, find him other clothes from the pile.”

Stiles grabs onto Scott’s wrist.  “You’re going to be okay, you know that right?”

“I guess there’s nothing else for me to be,” he mutters.  “I’m just…glad, I guess, that I’m not alone.”

Isaac grabs Scott's shoulders, Stiles thinks, like a literal angel of death.

He can hear them more clearly than Derek can once he's downstairs, but Derek can still hear them. Stiles knows because his eyes glance upward briefly or off to the side or wherever everyone is being too loud. New arrivals always do make them too loud.

“Pipes again,” he mutters.  “I’ll call someone out next week to take a look at them.”

Stiles nods distractedly, still listening, but then Derek frowns deeper and starts towards the stairs.  Stiles has no choice but to grab him and kiss him, wrap his arms around Derek’s neck and flatten their bodies together.

“Missed you,” he mutters.

“Hmm.”  Derek’s wraps his arms around Stiles’ middle and soon enough they’re walking each other back towards the couch without ever separating their mouths.

Things go quiet after that and Stiles lets himself hope that Scott brought balance to the house, that maybe they can be happy now. When Derek comes in from the porch the next morning, Stiles is grinning bright and setting up breakfast, but his face falls quick when Lydia follows him inside.

"Hey, Stiles, your friend Lydia is here."

"Yeah, I can see that. What are you doing here, my friend Lydia?"

She tilts her head.  "I just wanted to meet your boyfriend, Stiles. See who all the fuss was about; you've been away from home for so long."

Stiles forces a small, gives a small laugh.  “I’m 19, thank you very much, and I’m sure my parents are glad to be away from me anyway.”

“Mhm.”  She looks over at Derek, smiles.  “Well, I can see what kept you so preoccupied anyway.”

“Lyds—”

“He stands up to scrutiny,” Lydia says conspiratorially.  “You have to know, Derek, that Stiles was obsessed with me for a while, and if you’re the new object of his affection—which you obviously are—I just have to be certain that you’re good enough.”

Derek arches an eyebrow.  “So, uh, where do you live again?”

“Oh, you know, in town.”

"Well yes I assumed that much—”

"Hey, here's a thought," Lydia says, "since Stiles seems so attached to your couch and other horizontal spaces and you're so curious about his friends, why don't we have a little get together? I'll take care of everything, we just need your yard."

Stiles wants to grab her.  “C’mon, Lyds, Derek doesn’t wanna hang out with a bunch of teenagers—”

“I actually would love to meet your friends,” Derek interrupts, winding an arm around his waist.  “And your parents, actually.”

“Yeah, well, let’s save that for another time,” Stiles says weakly.

“The yard is yours, Lydia,” Derek tells her, but he’s looking straight at Stiles, and Stiles feels like he’s slowly drowning in week-old bath water abandoned by a very, very dirty bather.

* * *

 

“I don’t understand why you don’t want me to meet your friends,” Derek says later that afternoon after Lydia has gone and Stiles has calmed down a bit.  He won’t pretend it wasn’t a little insulting, seeing Stiles so nervous about the prospect.  “Hey.”  He holds onto Stiles’ arm.  “Do you—I mean—I thought you wanted this.”

Stiles nods, but it looks halfhearted.  “I want you,” he whispers.  “You know that.”

"Are you embarrassed because I'm older?"

Stiles shakes his head immediately.  "I'm nervous because they're…unpredictable."

"Lydia seems alright."

Stiles sighs and mumbles under his breath, "That's what makes her dangerous."

Derek frowns.  “I’m sure it’ll be okay.  How bad can they be?”

Stiles quickly reaches over towards the wall and knocks on it twice.  He shrugs when Derek smirks.  “You know, gotta knock on wood and all that.”

“I’m going to kiss you now,” Derek informs him, and Stiles—Stiles seems to be alright with that.

* * *

 

He doesn’t know what he’s expecting, having Stiles’ friends over to hang out in his front yard.  There’s enough space, he’ll go out and buy food, but it’s not—it’s not easy, thinking about the fact that his life has come to this.  He’s falling in love with a 19-year-old who has no plans for his future aside from a slight obsession with essentially every novel ever written.

“You learn a lot about the world through books,” Stiles has told him once.  “Like these things.”  He held up _A Game of Thrones_.  “What the fuck was this dude smoking?”

He’s passionate and caring and funny and sexy.  He likes sex, likes lounging around with Derek and fooling around, but there’s never—Derek doesn’t need to have penetrative sex, hasn’t in a while, but he can’t help but wonder—

He knows that if Stiles knew he was worrying about something so stupid he would roll his eyes, say _Don’t be dumb_ , and then kiss him.  And then whatever happened would happen.

There’s also, of course, the question of Stiles’ parents.  And God, that’s a weird thing to think about after having sex.  But Stiles is asleep in the bed next to him and Derek can’t stop thinking about why Stiles doesn’t want him to meet his parents.  They have to wonder where he’s disappearing to.  But if funds are really as tight as he says they’re probably working a lot.  They’re probably not paying that much attention to him.

He doesn’t need the attention like some others might.  He’s responsible and he’s not a child, not anymore.  He’s nearly a grown adult, tall and built, and Derek smiles at the thought of him sprouting up another inch or so, surpassing Derek entirely.

“Stop thinking so loudly,” Stiles mutters, and he rolls over to fit his face against Derek’s neck.

“I thought you were asleep.”

“Obviously I’m not.”  He nuzzles at Derek’s throat, kisses his collarbone.  “If either one of us should be unable to sleep, it’s me.  Tomorrow, all of my friends are going to be here and you’re going to meet them.”

“Friends are supposed to embarrass you.  It’s their job.”

Stiles sighs heavily.  “Sleep,” he says, “and we’ll worry about that tomorrow.”

Waking up with Stiles is nice.  He thinks he could do it for a long time, for as long as Stiles would let him.  Stiles is already getting dressed in yesterday’s clothes, scratching the back of his neck, and Derek sits up.

“You could move some things into my place,” he says.  “If you wanted.”

Stiles blinks.  “Like, have a drawer?”

Derek nods.  “Yeah, like have a drawer.”

“I—I don’t really have very many things.”

“I noticed by the worn out shoes and only two different pairs of jeans.  One of which, by the way, is too long on you.”  He looks Stiles up and down.  “I’ll buy you some new things.  We can go shopping tomorrow.”

“We’ll see,” Stiles tells him and shoves down the pants he’s just pulled on.  “C’mon, let’s actually shower before the rest of them get here.  I smell like come.”

Derek launches himself out of bed, still naked, and hooks a hand around the back of Stiles’ neck.  “I like the way you smell.”

Stiles grins.  “C’mon, creeper.”

* * *

 

Stiles is making sandwiches when the first knock on the door comes.  Derek, who’s putting in a load of laundry at the back of the house, starts down the hallway, but Stiles grabs it before he can.  It’s Boyd and Erica and Lydia, the ladies smiling cunningly and Boyd looking half bored and half amused.

“Where’s Isaac and Scott?”

“We don’t think Scotty’s quite ready yet to venture out into the world,” Lydia tells him, “and Isaac is keeping him company.  He might come down later if we annoy him enough.”

Derek appears then, squeezing in beside Stiles.  The introductions are smooth, precise, and they bring the food outside where there are blankets and Derek’s iPod jack.  Erica stays tucked under Boyd’s arm for a bulk of the event, which leads to Derek asking, “You two been together long?”

Erica smiles.  “Not that long.”

“Long considering the circumstances,” Lydia protests.  “A couple of years, actually.”

“That’s a long time for teenagers,” Derek says through a nod.  “And, uh, what about school?”

Lydia is the one who responds for them.  “We’ve decided we’re going to take a year off.  Boyd and Erica are going to see her extended family in France.”

“Oh, and what are you doing?”

“Staying in Beacon Hills,” she says with a shrug.  “Studying mathematics and making boys fall.”

Stiles pinches her.  “That’s our Lydia.”

They’re all lucky that Derek’s back is to the house when Isaac exits it, looking slightly less surly than usual.  He walks across the grass towards the blankets and sits down on the other side of Stiles, between him and Lydia.

“Isaac,” he tells Derek, reaching across to shake his hand.

Derek looks startled to say the least.  “Oh, I—hi.  I didn’t know we were expecting anyone else.”

“Fashionably late,” he says through a smirk.  He grabs one of the sandwiches and crosses his legs.  “So, what are we talking about?”

“College plans,” Stiles says stiffly.

Isaac is wearing his old Beacon Hills lacrosse jersey.  From eleven years ago.  “Not me,” he says when he’s done chewing.  “I’m younger than the rest of them, have another year of school left to go.  Interesting to hear what Stiles is thinking of, though.”

Derek, for his credit, doesn’t say anything.

“Wonder if you told him, in the interest of honesty, that the original reason you didn’t wanna leave old Beacon Hills was because of me.”  He says it through a shit-eating grin and it’s not fair, God, it’s not fair at all.  He has Scott now.  They all know it’s an inevitability, him and Scott, the way it all works out.  But those are the words that came out of his mouth and Stiles looks down at the checkered pattern by his feet.

“Oh.”  Derek looks at Stiles, and Stiles doesn’t look back.

“Maybe I should reintroduce myself,” Isaac laughs.  “Isaac Lahey, ex-boyfriend.”

Stiles closes his eyes, and when he opens them, Derek is still looking straight at him.  “Well, this is sufficiently awkward.  Derek, Isaac—Isaac, Derek.  This has been fun.  I’m gonna, uh, go into the freezer and get the ice cream bars.”

“I’ll do it,” Derek says, laying a hand on his knee.  “Stay with your friends.”

He gets up and walks back to the house and Stiles glares daggers at Isaac.  “I thought you were with Scott.”

“He wanted some alone time.  I thought I’d drop by and see the new beau.”

“You had no right to come here and start blabbing about—”

“About your sordid past that involved me between your legs?”  Isaac smirks.  “I’m sure he doesn’t care.  Funny to see the way he looked at you afterwards, though.”

“Sometimes I forget why I find you absolutely repulsive,” Lydia says, her eyes skyward.

“Remember now?”  He winks.

Derek comes back with the ice cream, tossing them to each person in turn, and Stiles sits closer to him.  “He’s just frosted,” he muttered.  “I mean—he’s being a jerk.  I broke up with him a couple of months ago, but he’s got a new boy now—don’t you, Isaac?”

Isaac smiles, and it’s actually quite disarming.  Always has been.  “We’ll see where it goes.  Sorry, Derek.  I wasn’t trying to be a twat.”

He was, really, but Derek seems to let it go.  Stiles knew he liked him for a reason.

* * *

 

When everyone is congregated upstairs at the end of the evening, when Derek has kissed Stiles goodbye and sent him on home—only for him to be forced back into the basement when his distance from the house could not be tolerated—Stiles sits down against the old furnace and blinks at Scott, who’s wearing some of Isaac’s old clothes.

“You know Isaac understands the word no,” Stiles grumbles.  “Sometimes he just likes to pretend he doesn’t.”

“I resemble that remark,” Isaac pipes up.

Scott shrugs.  “I don’t mind.  I mean, it’s—I’m okay.”

“What Stiles is trying to say, honey,” Lydia tells him, “is that you don’t have to fuck him if you don’t want to.”

Scott is blushing now, the corner of his mouth coming up.  “I know.”

“Jesus, it’s only been a day and our little Lahey made him forget all about the pretty girl he died for.”  Lydia sighs, and it sounds like she’s bemoaning the petty lives of poor, mere mortals.  “Erica took her time about it at least, had a proper mourning over her own body and everything before she jumped into Boyd’s arms.”

“I’m not,” Scott starts.  “We’re not—I like the company.”

“We’ve been trading war stories,” Isaac says, and he drops down next to Scott on Lydia’s old bed.  “He has some scars, I have some scars.  Common interests.”

“He’s never seen _The Walking Dead_ ,” Scott adds.  “I’ve been telling him about it.”

“Is that a movie about ghosts?” Stiles asks.

“Nah, a TV show.  About zombies.”  He glances towards the rickety stairs that lead up to the house.  “Doesn’t this guy have a TV?”

“I, uh, don’t really pay attention.”

Scott puts his hands on his stomach.  “So, what’s the deal then?  We don’t get hungry, we don’t get sleepy, we don’t have to use the bathroom?”

“Pretty much.  I mean, unless you appear to a human and engage in humanlike activities—such our buddy Stiles here—you won’t really need anything at all.  Running water is useful, though, and so on and so forth.”

Scott looks over at Stiles.  “So how’d you guys end up here anyway?  You can’t all be hiking accidents.”

It’s something they’ve all had to tell each other, sit down and share their stories.  Stiles supposes ten years is a good enough amount of time to do it all again.

“I was the first one,” he says.  “It was 1952.  I had just graduated high school.  I had funds for Berkeley, I had a car, I had a job, and I had my dad.  My, uh, mom had died when I was eight.  Got sick and passed away.  We survived.  And I…”  He trails off, looking up towards the stairs again.  “I was drunk, and I was driving, and we all wanted to come out into the woods to light off firecrackers and have a smoke.  We crashed into a tree out there, by the property line.  I was the only casualty.”

Boyd lifts his head.  “1963, after MLK’s big speech.  There was a, uh, uprising across the county about blacks in white neighborhoods.  My parents made enough money to keep in a nice town, me and my sister, but there was a revamping of the KKK.  It was mostly in the south, Alabama and stuff, but we were scared.  We were the only black people in Beacon Hills.  My sister got kidnapped, taken right out of our front yard.  When I found where she was being kept, she had already run off, gotten herself to safety, but the guy—”  He pulls down the collar of his shirt to show the indents of his skin around his neck.  “He strung me up, tried to suffocate me but I was too heavy.  Then he stabbed me.  I was fighting back, but I was already dead by the time Stiles grabbed his gun.”

Scott looks at Stiles.  “You killed him?”

“I forced him out to the property line, made him step across it.”  Stiles looks at Boyd.  “And then I shot him between the eyes.”

“Stiles was also the one who got my sister out of there.”  He doesn’t say anything about failing to get Boyd out of there.  Stiles appreciates it.

“I was the next one,” Lydia says, brushing a piece of hair behind her ears.  “1972.  Beacon Hills was not the brightest nor the most fashionable town in the world but I had my fair share of fun here.  I was…independent.  Too independent for a lot of people around here, I guess.  I did a lot of shopping, a lot of dancing, and a lot of fucking.  One night, I was out and I wasn’t watching my drink.  Someone drugged me, a group of boys.”  She gestures to the bed.  “We ended up here, where they gang raped and murdered me all because I had turned one of them down for a date my junior year of high school.”

“They got their own,” Isaac mutters.

“We can’t leave the house,” Lydia continues, “except for on Halloween, when all hell breaks loose.  We’d been trying to leave every day, trying to figure out a way to make the binds break, and when we left that evening, we went out and killed them.”  She grins.  “Well, tortured them a little bit first.  Now we have a tradition.  We go out and hunt for abusive boyfriends and husbands and give them a little bit a spook.”

“Then it was me, in 1988,” Erica says.  “I was the only normal one, I think.”  She smiles.  “I had epilepsy.  My mom was upstairs, asleep, and I was doing my homework.  My dad wanted me to come downstairs, help him with dinner.  We’re close enough to the road that sometimes the headlights would put me out if they went through the trees.  I had a fit and I fell, cracked my head open at the bottom.”

“And finally,” Isaac says grandly, “me and dear old Dad in 2002.  These idiots don’t know how to make a story short enough.  My abusive dad took it too far one night, locked me in that freezer of his, and I suffocated because he got too drunk and forgot about me.  When he found me, he panicked, buried the body behind the house, and took off.  Watched him do the whole thing.”

Scott takes it all in, nodding slowly.  “So that’s…  That’s intense.”

“That’s life,” Stiles says.

“That’s death,” Lydia counters.

“And now it’s 2013,” Scott says on an exhale, “and I tripped and fell and broke my neck while hiking.  My mom is never going to forgive me.  Fuck.  My mom.”  He leans his head into a hand, sighing.  “This must be tearing her apart.”

“We’re all really sorry,” Stiles says.  “I—if we’d known—we never wanted anyone else to end up like us.”

“Not your fault.  It’s not anyone’s fault.”  He closes his eyes, tips his head back.  “So if we don’t get tired what do we do?”

“We have a lot of time.  This place has had internet for a couple years, but since Derek’s living here now we can actually use it.  We read, fuck around, talk about shit.”  Isaac tips his knee against Scott’s.  “Derek’s not a bad live-in, actually.  Stiles and Lyds like the attic, Boyd and Erica prefer the land outside the house, but I have a room.  My old room.  Derek shoved some extra blankets and shit into it for storage when he first got here.  I’ve been using it ever since.”

Scott nods.  “Okay.”

They disappear then and Boyd and Erica follow.  Stiles finds Lydia’s fingers, twisting them with his own.  “To the attic, my darling?”

* * *

 

One day, Erica and Scott come back to the house and Scott looks like he’s been torn in two.  He sits down on Lydia’s bed and Isaac is next to him in an instant, hands on his face.

“We were taking a walk,” Erica says quietly, “and he saw her.”

“Saw who?” Isaac asks.

“His girlfriend.”  She licks her lips.  “She was parked over on the other edge of the property, by the road.”

Isaac is quiet for a moment.  “Was she with someone?”

“No,” Scott says.  “Just sitting there.  We used to—there’s where we used to meet.  Her grandfather didn’t like me so we had to sneak around.  I would write secret messages on her car window and we would meet over there.”

“She’s in mourning,” Erica says soothingly, kissing Scott’s temple.  “But he just stood there and when she looked up—it seemed like she saw him.  For a second.”

“I don’t know,” Stiles mutters.  “It’s pretty rare for a fresh one to be able to be seen so quickly.”

“Well he’s not so fresh anymore, is he?” Isaac asks gruffly.

“Isaac,” Scott starts, but the other boy hushes him.

“It’s okay.”  He sticks out his hand and Scott takes it, going into his arms. 

Stiles throws his hands up in exasperation when Isaac and Scott suddenly aren't there. There is no puff of smoke or flash of light; they are simply there one moment and not the next. Lydia knocks her head back against the wall.  "Well if Isaac is good for something it's fucking a smile onto your face you know?"

“Don’t be crude,” Stiles mutters.  “Not about that.”

“She probably just thinks she saw something,” Erica tells them.  “It’s okay.”

Stiles isn’t so much worried about as he is about the fact that as the year continues, as the months pass by, Derek is getting more and more antsy about going out to dinner and meeting Stiles’ parents.

Sooner or later, something is going to come to head and Stiles—Stiles is going to have to tell him, or disappear forever.

* * *

 

"Do you want to see her?"

Scott blinks up at Isaac and shakes his head.  "We can't leave—”

"We can on Halloween. And if you're going to talk to someone, if you're going to pretend to be real for any period of time you need to practice. We can…  I’ll think of something. I've never had someone to pretend to live for," he says with a tight smile.

Scott stays quiet for a moment. "Can I also see my mom?"

Something in Isaac's face falls.  "Yeah…  Yeah, we can do that too."

"Why are you sad?"

Isaac swallows tightly.  “It was just me and my dad.  My mom died when I was younger—my dad would always tell me that I killed her.  And when I was gone, there was no point in leaving the house, no one to see.”

“You’ve never left the house?”

“Not since I died.”  He sits down next to Scott on a nest of blankets and their knees are touching.  “We can see them in October.  Until then, we just have to be patient.”

“That’s only a few weeks away.  That’s nothing when I’m going to be around forever.”

"You can't—”  Isaac bites back the sharpness of his tone.  “It would only be a night. She can’t come with you—do you think she'll really…”

"I know it won't be like Stiles and Derek. Because she'll know…about me. I just want to tell her that I'm alright and that I love her."  Isaac looks away, towards the door, and Scott reaches out, touches his hand.  “Isaac.”

“We could kill her,” he says softly.  “If you really wanted to be with her, if you love her that much—”

“Isaac,” he interrupts, louder this time, and he grabs the other boy’s face.  “Who do you think I’m talking about?”

“I—Allison, of course—”

And Scott surges in, hands curving over the back of Isaac’s neck so that he can pull him into the kiss.  It’s long and slow and wonderful and when he pulls away, Isaac tips his forehead against Scott’s.

“I want to say goodbye to Allison,” he mutters, “but I want to tell my mom I’m okay and that I love her and that I’ll be thinking about her every day for eternity.”

"You're over her so quickly? The girl you died for?"

Scott knocks their foreheads together lightly.  "I didn't die for her, you idiot.  I tripped. I was being a dumbass and showing off and I got myself killed. And yes I love Allison, she is beautiful and brilliant and I miss her just like I miss everyone and I miss school and I miss lacrosse and I miss pizza. But I'm not rotting in the ground and I think I get to be happier than most dead people and that's not because of her."

Isaac blinks at him.  Scott knows—has learned—that Isaac doesn’t share his feelings, not openly at least.  He’s picked up some things, bitterness and anger and confusion, guilt and jealousy and regret.  He’s a good guy, though, Scott honestly believes that.  He’s forceful, but he had waited, waited until Scott was open and calmer and more willing to accept him, waited until Scott had actually wanted him to kiss him.

Now, Isaac can kiss him and all Scott feels is loved, outrageously, passionately loved.  He’s never—not with a guy—but there’s something about Isaac, something about his soul, and Scott can’t help but give himself completely over to whatever is going on in his chest.

People say that some children never learn how to love if they are given no affection, if they are mistreated and hurt. If they never hear a tender word. But Scott doesn't think love is something you learn. Maybe it's something that builds up inside you, sometimes so much that it clogs and can't get out. But Isaac can, he does, he's held all this inside and Scott thinks just in this kiss that if they weren't already dead it would eat them alive.

Isaac has a hand fisted in Scott’s shirt when they break the kiss.

“Stay with me,” he whispers, and Scott grins.

“I will.”

* * *

 

When Halloween comes, Stiles spends the morning with Derek in bed, warm and comfortable.

“I’m going out,” Stiles says when they get out of the shower.  “With Lydia and the others.”

“You sound particularly excited.  Halloween plans?”

Stiles beams.  “Yeah, I mean—yeah.  We’re just gonna go out.  We have a tradition, Lydia and I.  And I think Isaac and his new boyfriend are getting up to their own stuff tonight, too.”  He slips on a T-shirt, leans over the corner of the counter to kiss Derek.  “Don’t wait up.”

He can see the disappointment, because Derek knows or thinks he knows, that Stiles goes out with friends. It's obvious he still believes Stiles is embarrassed, that he doesn't want to be seen in town with him.

He swallows tightly.  “You know the reason we don’t go out—”

“I told you I’d pay for dinner and a movie—”

“I don’t need you to pay for me when we could just as easily stay home and I could cook for you.”  He kisses Derek’s cheek.  “C’mon, I’ll make breakfast.”

He leaves Derek to his marathon of Friends to stave off the horror movies and meets Lydia in the basement.

"Have you got someone in mind for tonight?"

She nods but says nothing. She simply lays another layer of dark red on her lips and smiles at herself.

It’s a big night for Scott, that Stiles knows.  He’s wearing a stripped sweater and blue jeans and he looks—alive.  He looks good, like he’s okay, like he’s surviving, and he knows that Scott’s mom is going to sob, that she’s going to be so upset by everything, but that’s something he and Isaac will have to figure out together.

Erica and Boyd are just going out into town to walk around, see how things have changed over the year since the last time they left the land.  They’re not as excited about it as Lydia is, though.  She goes all out for Halloween, wearing the same outfit she had so many years ago, the dress with the blood stains and the dirt.  Her face is immaculate, her body perfect, and she’s going to kill someone tonight, Stiles is completely aware.

“Who?” he asks when they leave, walking towards town.

"It was in the news when your boy was sleeping a few days ago. The girl survived but she's still in the hospital. He's her father's golf buddy but they're blaming it on the pool boy since she's still unconscious."

Stiles knows that the authorities have no idea, that maybe the girl will wake up and not remember the truth. But Lydia knows. Lydia is strong and vicious and powerful and she knows things, many things, that happen outside their walls.

“Where is he?”

“I have the address and I did some research on Derek’s computer.”  She holds up a piece of paper with a man’s face.  “This is him.”  He looks like an aggressive man already, square jaw and low brow, frowning.  It’s not a mug shot.  Looks like it’s from Facebook.  “Anything you’d like to do after that’s over with?”

Stiles shrugs.  “Let’s see how long it takes.”

His house is dark when they get there, the lights turned off and no sound escaping.  There’s a sign on the front door that’s warning people not to knock or ring the bell.  They go in anyway.

Through the hallways of the house, Stiles can see that in the bedroom towards the back, a television is on. 

The morality of it all is what had startled him at first, how he expected to feel guilty and angry at himself, taking another person’s life.  And sometimes he still does, but then he reads about girls like Lydia, girls who are victims of men who don’t care, and he doesn’t feel so guilty anymore.

It’s always a game.  They start with putting a little bit of fear into him.  Flickering lights, sounds—Lydia makes the TV cut off and then, moments later, come back to life when the man is in the kitchen.  He comes back in with another beer and stares at the TV, the way it casts light on the dark walls.  He can’t see where Stiles and Lydia have made themselves invisible, see that they’re just standing there, staring at him.  Eventually he’ll let his imagination get the best of him, they know.  They just have to push him a little farther.

They start to move things, let them slide across the floor.  When Stiles gets close he can see the bandages on the man’s hands, there to help heal the skin that was torn while he was busy beating his girlfriend into a coma.

Stiles changes the channel.  Frowning, the man grabs for the remote and changes it back to the procedural cop drama.  Stiles does it again, scrolls through channel after channel, until he lands on the news.

“—Courtney Feland, the victim of what appears to be a brutal attack from her family’s pool boy.”

It’s a small town.  The story is still circulating on the news, and Stiles uses it to his advantage while Lydia is busy sending a chill down the man’s neck.

By the time he’s startled enough to stand up and turn on the lights, they’re ready.  They like to switch it up, have their victims meet their demise the way that terrifies them the most.  Sometimes that’s strangulation, a hanging, maybe even drowning in their tub.  Very rarely do they use firearms.  They’re too fast, too easy, and their victims don’t suffer, not enough.

The most important thing, though, is that when Lydia appears to him, she looks enough like his unconscious girlfriend to startle him into falling backwards onto his floor, staring up at her like she’s a ghost.  And, well, she is.

This is Lydia’s time, ultimately, and so Stiles mostly sticks to the shadows, takes a Sharpie and writes all over his walls, writes that he was the one who put the girl in the hospital, that if she wakes up at least it won’t be to a world where this criminal is still alive.  By the time Stiles comes back to Lydia, the man is dead, and the scene is a mess.  Lydia wipes her hands off on her outfit and tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, smearing his blood over her cheekbone.

It looks good.

“Come on,” she says cheerily.  “The diner is having a costume contest.”

They walk out the front door.  Stiles wraps an arm around her.  “What are we again?”

“Serial killers.  Duh.”

* * *

 

Derek is just sitting down to a beer and a burger at the bar in the center of town when his phone buzzes.  It’s a local text alert from the police department, warning anyone who’s subscribed to their messages to stay safe and avoid strangers, but that just makes Derek smirks and roll his eyes.  It’s Halloween.

Something that he admires about Beacon Hills is the fact that it’s a small town.  It seems like everyone knows everyone, and they take town pride pretty seriously, too.  He’s looking forward to future holidays here, because if it’s anything like Halloween, it’s going to be an extremely festive winter season.

Everything in town is decked out with decorations and gruesome games.  There’s bobbing for apples and specials at restaurants if you come in with costumes.  There are costume competitions and races and games for kids.  There’s a pin the head on the chopping victims thing that Derek reads about in the newsletter, and that’s kind of when he decides he should stay away from the park for the rest of the evening, not that he has anything against decapitation.

Something that does catch his eye behind the bar is a giant, bound book called Beacon Hills: Murder House.

“What’s that?” he asks the waitress when she takes his plate.

She looks him up and down.  “You new in town?”

“Yeah, been here a couple of months.”

“You didn’t buy the place by the preserve, did you?”

He frowns, eyebrows shoving together.  “Yeah.  I, uh, haven’t really been into town.”

She smirks.  “It’s kind of a local legend.  Wouldn’t want to scare you away.”

“Try me.”

When she hands the book over to him, he’s expecting a house built during the establishment of the town, something old and lost since then, but the legend living on.  He expects that it isn’t real, might never have been real, but then he sees that the picture on the first page is of his house, and it makes him pale a little bit.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” the waitress says sweetly, and then she ducks away, leaving him to the pages.

The first few are roughed up bullshit bits about how the spirits of the house still haunt it to this day, never leaving behind the place where they died.  It tells a back story of how the house came to be a trap of human souls, that the property was originally owned by a witch who practiced black magic, only she was killed by witch hunters in the town square and her soul never made it back to its home.  It was abandoned for a long time after that until the 1950s, when it was restored as Beacon Hills made its booming comeback as a thriving small city in Northern California.

The first victim is listed as a 19-year-old boy and his picture, in black and white, makes Derek feel like he’s going to faint.  He doesn’t read the blurb, can’t make himself look down and read about how this kid supposedly died, so he turns the page.

All of them, they’re all in this book, and it has to be a prank.  They’re actors that the town has drummed up for the last couple years, used them and this book to scare people as a laugh.

The last page is a continuation of the legend, that none of the souls can leave that house, trapped there forever, doomed to carry out eternity in that one house, on that one spot of land, except on Halloween.  On Halloween, when the spirit world meets the real world, they can leave that house, and if these faces are seen—everyone in the town knows what it means.

Derek feels like he’s going to be sick.  This is the worst joke anyone’s ever told him, the worst thing anyone could ever say to him, and he stands up, leaving the book there in his attempt to escape.

He’ll talk to Stiles about it, ask him when he gave that picture to the guys for the book, how they got all of his friends to do that, and how the book looks so old when those pictures are exact likenesses of his friends in their present states.

His stomach feels like lead, and when he gets into his house and turns on the kitchen lights, grabbing for the tequila he has on a top shelf, his hands are shaking.  He’s scared of what he might find if he goes looking, scared that he might be right, but also scared that he’s overreacting and this is the exact reaction people are hoping to get from folks like him.

He does a shot, then another, shaking his head.  And then he settles on the couch and tries to find some kind of TV that doesn’t involve horror movies. 

When the front door opens hours later, he’s nodding off and he doesn’t have the ability to lift his head and have a real conversation.  Later, he’ll remember that he saw Lydia and Stiles walk in and go upstairs, but that will only be after he’s woken up and noticed the blanket Stiles slung over him in the middle of the night.

He still feels sick to his stomach in the morning, in part because of the alcohol he’d consumed, but also because of the things he remembers—the book.  He wanders upstairs to brush his teeth and finds Stiles in his bed, shirtless and lazy looking, running a hand through his own hair.

“Hey, stud,” he says, grinning as he sits up.  “Did you have a good night?”

His mouth feels like cotton, and he doesn’t know the proper way to say are you an actor or a ghost, so he just ducks into the bathroom and turns on the tap.

Stiles stands.  Derek can hear his footsteps, and he sighs at himself because Stiles is solid.  They’ve touched and caressed and Stiles has eaten food and—

But he always smells like a person.  He doesn’t sweat, Derek can’t ever remember him using the bathroom, and he can only ever recall Stiles showering at his place after sex activities, like he doesn’t need to shower just because of a day of grime that’s built up.  He has only a few outfits, something Derek had attributed to his lack of wealth, but he doesn’t know where Stiles lives, he doesn’t have a cell phone, and the things he says—

1952, the book had said.  That was when Stiles was supposed to have died, and there are times when Stiles will looks confused or frustrated because he says something that Derek doesn’t understand, a slang term, like something out of _Grease_.  He’s easily upset by technology.  Derek remembers having to teach him how to use the touch screen and pad of his computer, something he had also filed away as evidence that Stiles family wasn’t that well off.  It would explain why he lived so far from the city, why he wasn’t leaving to go to school.  But Derek has never met Stiles’ parents, and Stiles doesn’t like to talk about them.

“Go outside with me,” Derek says, and he isn’t proud of how his voice shakes.

“Sure,” Stiles responds, kissing his shoulder.  “Wanna go for a hike?”

“No.  C’mon.”  He spits in the sink and rinses his mouth, moving back into the bedroom.  He grabs Stiles’ shirt off of the floor, tosses it at him, and waits as he puts it on.  Shoes aren’t important, not really, even if there’s a chill in the air, so he beckons Stiles outside and, too quickly, into his car.

“What—Derek—what are you doing?”

He knows it’s creepy, but he’s not thinking about that right now, isn’t able to think about it really, so he locks all of the doors and turns over the engine.

“Derek,” Stiles says, louder now.  “Derek, stop it, you’re scaring me.”

Derek doesn’t speak.

“Hey, no, I don’t—I don’t really wanna go out after all.  I’m not even wearing shoes and I’m still wearing your sweatpants and I don’t have a jacket.  Let’s go back into the house.  Derek—Derek, please—”

But Derek just pulls out over the road of fallen leaves, and it only takes a minute, a minute of Stiles saying his name over and over again—until there’s silence but for the engine, and Stiles’ seat is empty.

He stops the car at the main road, heart pounding too loudly in his chest, and he knows he’s having a panic attack so he turns off the engine and grips the steering wheel, leaning his forehead against it as he tries to calm down, catch his breath.  It’s long minutes before he turns to go back towards the house, and then Stiles is standing on the front porch, looking devastated.

Derek can’t go near him, stays by the car and stares at him, still breathing heavily.

“You’re dead,” he says softly, but it sounds like it echoes.

Stiles looks down at his feet.  “How did you find out?”

“There’s a book in this bar in town.  It’s all about this house—all about all of the people that died here.”  The back of his throat feels sour, sharp, like he’s going to puke.  “There are pictures.  Blurbs.  At first I thought it was a Halloween thing, that it was all full of actors.  And then I noticed that I’ve met all of the people in that book.”

“Derek—”

“How is this even possible?” he asks, hands forming fists.  “Ghosts aren’t real.”

“What did it say?” Stiles wants to know.  “The book.”

“I didn’t read all of it.”  He runs a hand through his hair.  “But it said you couldn’t leave the house, none of you, not except for Halloween.  And that explained a lot.  And then I thought about how I’ve never seen you outside of my property and I’ve never met your parents and the only friends I’ve met are all—dead.  They’re all dead.”  He blinks.  “You must have known this was going to happen—you’re smart.  What were you going to do?  Kill me?”

He says it like a joke, impossible, but then it hits him.

“You were, weren’t you?” he croaks.

“No!” Stiles nearly shouts.  “I was—I was going to disappear.  Let you get over me, watch you live.  I—I was never going to let anyone touch you.  That’s the sick joke of this house, that everyone who’s ever lived in it has died, and I wasn’t sure if I believed that, but I knew that if it was true I wasn’t going to let it happen to you.”

“And what about when I got old?” Derek demands.

“I don’t know!  I wasn’t planning that far ahead!”

Derek swallows tightly.  “How did it happen?” he asks.  “You.  I—I couldn’t read it, I couldn’t bear it.”

“Drunk driving,” Stiles tells him, and Derek shakes his head.

“You’re too smart for that, don’t pull that crap with me.  Tell me how it happened.”

“What?  You think I’m lying to you about that too?”

“Yeah, I fucking do, so tell me the truth, Stiles.”  He’s breathing heavily, his heart smashing to pieces, and Stiles doesn’t speak.  “I love you,” he spits.  “I’m in love with you and you’re not even real.”

“I am real,” Stiles argues.  “Everything we’ve done is real.”

Derek shakes his head.  “You were lying to me the whole time, Stiles.  You let me think we had a future, you let me fall in love with you—”

“And I fell just as hard!” he shouts.  “I fell in love with you without even meaning to and I’m the one who has to spend eternity missing you!  I’m the one who has to sit in this fucking house and remember the way you kissed me and the way you looked at me and then I have to remember this conversation, and if I wasn’t already dead, that would have killed me all over again.”

“Go away,” Derek says brokenly.  “Just—just go away.”

“What was I supposed to say, Derek?” Stiles demands to know.  “Was I supposed to come right out and tell you that you were living in Murder House, that everyone here is a dead teenager, and that if you stay some curse will probably take you too?”

Derek shakes his head.  “Stiles, I need you to just—stop.  Just stop for a couple of hours, just go wherever it is you go when we’re not—just go.  Just leave.  Just leave!”

And when Derek looks back up, Stiles is gone, the porch is empty, and he’s free to walk into his house and start packing.

* * *

 

Over the next few days, all Derek does is call places about apartments in New York.  He had a life there, can probably get his old job back if he begs hard enough and takes a pay cut, and when he finds out that his old landlord has a place for him, he takes it immediately and says he’ll be there before Thanksgiving.

There’s a matter of the moving truck, the one he’ll probably have to drive all the way across the country himself if he doesn’t want to put up with the fee.  He doesn’t have much here, clothes and knick knacks and pretty much everything he brought with him.

He has a hard time going to sleep at night.  He gets a couple of hours when he can, usually when the sun is still out, like some kind of superstition that ghosts won’t attack in the daylight.  He doesn’t sleep in his bedroom, is only in there to pack up his blankets and bookshelf when he picks up the truck.

It’s the day he’s meant to leave that Stiles comes out of the woodwork.

Derek immediately freezes where he is, standing by the front door while Stiles is leaning against the kitchen counter, holding Derek’s leather jacket.

“Here,” Stiles says, holding it out to him.

Derek takes it.  “You’re not trying to stop me.”

“I knew this was going to happen,” he says with a shrug.  “Somewhere in my mind.  It was—nice while it lasted.”

Derek doesn’t respond.

“The best thing that ever happened to me.”  Stiles nods to himself, clears his throat.  “So, enjoy New York, have a nice life.”

Stiles is gone when Derek blinks, and he’s left staring at his empty living room, the biggest room of a house that now belongs to someone else, that’s now someone else’s problem to deal with, whoever the Whittemore family is—and he almost feels sorry for them, that they’re going to come into this, but he knows Stiles won’t let anything happen to them.  He believes that, at least.

Heartbreak is the same this time, even if it’s also monumentally different.  The end result leads him the same way, the same thoughts—they can’t be together, it won’t work out, they don’t have a future together, and even though Derek feels like he’s being torn apart on the inside, he will still always remember the reason why.  And he doesn’t think that will ever be trivial enough for him to go crawling back.

 

* * *

 

 

2019

 

“Five years can change a lot of things,” Lydia tells Stiles as they sit around the new marble countertop put in by the Whittemores—when they were still living in the house. 

After the tragic, unfortunate death of their young son, they had to move out of grief.  And, without them knowing, another page is added to the book in town, and another ghost moves into that house, to stay.

Jackson is bit of a tool, but he’s absolutely mad about Lydia, which is probably the greatest thing about him.  The only good thing about him, really.  He puts up with Stiles because Lydia adores him, and he and Boyd and Isaac bond over anger and hatred and frustration.  Erica is the sassy bitch of a sister that Jackson never wanted and now has, and Scott he occasionally manages to get along with, for Stiles and Isaac’s sakes.

The house has been empty for two years now, and even though Lydia’s words are true, they can’t truly calculate how much things have changed, when it all feels so constant.  With no one in the house, there’s no technology to get a hold of, no way to watch the news or catch up with movies and books.  At least in the 50s they had regularly delivered newspapers, Stiles thinks bitterly.

“Now I need a fucking computer to get any word from the outside,” he scoffs, pacing around the front room of the house.  “How am I supposed to know anything?”

“Someone new will move in eventually and we’ll catch up then,” she reassures him, examining her nails.  “Patience is a virtue.  You should know.”

Stiles swallows tightly and turns to face her.  “It’s easier for you all.  You have Jackson, Boyd has Erica, Isaac has Scott.”

“Your person will come along and die, just like we all did.  Even if God has a twisted sense of humor, he doesn’t leave you alone forever.”

“My person came and went,” Stiles reminds her.  “I was the only one who got a choice and I was too selfless to just stick a knife in his back and be done with it.”

Lydia shrugs.  “He would have hated you and you know it.  You did the right thing, Stiles.  So Derek wasn’t the love of your eternity—someone else will be.”

“You sound so confident.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever have a Jackson, Isaac didn’t think he’d ever have a Scott.”  She glares at him.  “We don’t make the rules, Stiles; we just live here.  Nobody tells us anything.  We just have to wait and see and wait and see—when your person comes along, you’ll know.  And they’ll die on their own, in their own time, no murder required.”

Stiles can’t stay around her like that, when she’s feeling preachy, and so he goes outside, arms crossed over his chest.  It’s January, but he doesn’t feel the chill.  Halloween came and went, but it’s been harder lately, because apparently the house is gaining more and more popularity.  They had dumb kids breaking inside days beforehand this year, trying to get the ghosts to come out.  Finally, Isaac had gotten so fed up with it that he’d scared them into running away.

When everyone returned the next morning, the house had received a bit of wear and tear from other people climbing around inside, but nothing in the house that truly matters is disturbed, and that’s the end of it.

People recognize them sometimes, drunk and sounding like lunatics.  They take to wearing masks, getting their jobs done and then disappearing again.  It’s never hard to convince someone they’re crazy when they’re talking about ghosts.

Stiles has stopped wishing for Derek to come back.  It’s been five years now, more than, and even though he hoped and prayed and wished, he knows that Derek is having a life out there, is going to grow old in what will feel like just the blink of an eye to Stiles, and then one day, Stiles will wake up to a world where Derek Hale doesn’t exist, and he won’t even know it.

He still thinks about Derek.  He still keeps track of the day they met, laughs to himself at how ridiculously love obsessed he still is, and it’s true—he still loves Derek.  He meant it when he said he was going to have to remember loving Derek for the rest of eternity.

And maybe Lydia is right and someone will come along and sweep him off his feet and he’ll fall madly in love with them and they’ll have an eternity together, but that doesn’t mean he’ll ever forget Derek.

They don’t get cars out here often, not since the city declared the spot historic and important to the legends built up around it, meaning that it could never be destroyed, never be taken down, probably never even remodeled, just left to its state to preserve what people think about it.  The city owns it now, which means if someone wants to move in, it’s going to take prodding and a bundle of cash.

None of them have high hopes for that.  It’s a good thing, Stiles thinks, because if the deaths stop then the popularity will stop and nobody will care anymore.  They’ll be left alone or someone will claim the land and build a mansion on it.  Lydia would love a mansion.

When he hears tires approaching, crunching over the road the leads up to the house, it feels like his still heart freezes even more in his chest.  No more people, no more—there can’t be any more.

He makes himself disappear, knows the feeling of being invisible, and so he can stand there and watch while the car pulls up and maybe changes their lives forever.

Honestly, he still doesn’t know much about being a ghost, so it’s entirely probable that being around for so long can lead to complications like pain and hallucinations and insanity, that he could go absolutely bonkers and start hacking people to death, because right now he thinks he sees Derek Hale getting out of a rental car and walking up the porch steps and into the house.

He follows numbly, feeling like he’s floating.

Derek doesn’t really look that much older.  He’s still young, still gorgeous, still heartbreakingly perfect, and he walks into the house without a second thought and just looks around.

“So,” he says, but Stiles knows that no one is appearing to him.  Lydia and Isaac are standing at the far end of the room, towards windows that show off the forest to the west, that make the house glow early in the morning.  No one else is in the room.  “I thought about this for a long time,” Derek says loudly, like he’s beckoning them to him.  “I was never going to come back, you know, and then I realized that I had to because I don’t know that any of it is real.”

Lydia is glaring holes into Stiles right now, but he doesn’t look at her.

Derek continues, unprompted.  “I’ve been getting really bad headaches for about two years, bunch of other symptoms.  Vomiting a lot over the past six months, started stuttering, and sometimes my eyes go wonky and I can’t see straight.  I thought I probably needed glasses.”  He looks down at his own feet and then turns, examining the room slowly.  “Turns out I have an inoperable brain tumor, and less than four months to live, so if you all are real and you weren’t just a fucking figment of my imagination, can you come out here and make me feel less like a fucking crazy person?”

Stiles feels like he can’t move. 

So when Lydia flickers into view for Derek, he turns towards her, blinking.

“I’m here,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest.  “Are you just here to make sure you’re not crazy?”

Derek looks terrified, shocked really, and he shakes his head.  “No.  I wanted to see Stiles.”

“What makes you think he wants to see you?”

“Because if he meant what he said to me, he’ll want to hear what I have to say.”  Derek looks around.  “Is he here?”

“On the property?  Always.”

“I—can he hear me?  Is he avoiding me on purpose?”

“Are you here to stay goodbye or what, Derek?” Lydia demands to know.  “I don’t enjoy my friends being toyed with, or either say what you have to say or leave.”

“I’ve thought about you all every day for the past five years,” Derek tells her, not a little bitterly.  “I’ve thought about Stiles every day for the past five years—I kept thinking about coming back.  I almost did, a bunch of times.  It doesn’t make sense, none of it, but I fell in love with him and I wasn’t going to pull a Romeo and Juliet and kill myself to be with him, but I also can’t imagine just leaving him behind forever.”

“So what?” Lydia asks, but Stiles knows that she’s smart enough to understand what Derek is saying.  She just wants to hear him say it.  They all do.

And that’s true, because Scott and Jackson are standing on the stairs and Erica and Boyd have appeared just a few feet from Derek, watching him intently.

“So,” Derek sighs, and it sounds like resignation, “I came here to die.”  He spreads his hands.  “All things considered, it’s the best option I have.  I wait for this thing to kill me in New York and I become another casualty to the city, or I come back here and admit that I can’t think of spending another day without Stiles and that if this is fate, then it’s fucked up and it’s sad and it hurts, but it’s the best I could have hoped for under the circumstances.”

“You love him.”

“Of course I love him.  I never stopped.”

Stiles can’t help himself then, can’t stop because he feels like he’s breaking apart, so he rushes into Derek’s arms, taking him by surprise.  But Derek accepts it, hugs him just as hard, and sobs his name into Stiles’ hair.

“Jesus Christ,” he says after a long moment, “how long were you standing there?”

“The whole time,” Stiles tells him, fingers digging into his ribs.  “I’m so—I’m so sorry you’re sick—I—”

Derek shakes his head, presses his lips to Stiles’ temple.  “Not your fault.  My whole family is apparently cursed to die young.”

“You don’t know what you’re signing up for,” Stiles tells him anyway.  “Literally eternity stuck in one house—it can’t be better than just—”

“But I’ll be here with you,” Derek says brokenly.  “I didn’t just rush into this, Stiles, I thought about it for a long time.  I weighed my options.  I know what I want.”

“You hated me when you left.”

“I didn’t—I didn’t understand.”  He cups Stiles’ face.  “And it’s a cop out and it’s stupid but I never took the time to listen to you and I didn’t think about it from your end until very, very recently and I’m sorry, but I still think—I still think I did the right thing and I came back here because I wanted to, because I was ready.  And that’s the best thing I could have done for us.”

Stiles leans into him, closes his eyes.  “What happens now?”

“Now I wait for the truck that’s meant to arrive before nightfall with my old things,” Derek tells him, “and I make the house as much like a home as I possibly can—for all of us.”

“It won’t stay.”

“It’ll be good enough.”  Derek kisses him then, kisses him like he used to, and Stiles throws his arms around Derek’s neck, falling into it like the sucker that he is.  “I really missed you,” Derek whispers.

“You’re telling me.”

* * *

 

It’s almost like it was, then.  They spend endless hours together, touching and kissing and laughing.  Stiles doesn’t fake eating anymore, just eats when he wants to—when Derek orders Chinese food or pizza and the smell hits him so hard he thinks he’s going to die.  Figuratively.  He knows they’re not alone, though, and he makes an effort to recognize that when he can.

“I can fix it up for you,” he tells Lydia when she shows him the basement.  “I’ll get a new mattress for the bed frame, anything you want.”

They make the entire house more cheery, a bed for Scott and Isaac in the extra room that they’ve claimed as their own, and one for Boyd and Erica too, in the den.  If anyone were to come in and look at that, it would be hard to explain.  Stiles is kind of glad the house is still popular then, because it means people are easily scared away.

“How’d you get here?” Derek asks Jackson one day.  “If you don’t mind me asking.”

Jackson shrugs.  “Halloween a couple of years ago, all of these guys were out.  My parents were going to a party and I was hiding from some girl I’d been seeing, so I was at home.  Some guys came into the house, talking about it being this place where all of these people were killed.  They got spooked when they saw me, thought I was a ghost, I guess, and they emptied a cartridge into me.”

Derek doesn’t really know what to say to that, but Jackson doesn’t make him say anything at all.  He and Lydia just sit on the couch and continue watching _The Notebook_ —which, since its introduction to the shelf of movies next to the television in the house, has quickly become Lydia’s favorite.  Stiles stands though and, holding Derek’s hand, leads him upstairs to their bedroom.

“None of them know the truth,” Stiles tells him as they’re lying together, faces mere inches apart.  “About how I died.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told them all that it was drunk driving.”

“Like you told me.”

Stiles swallows, nuzzling into his neck.  “The truth isn’t pretty, Derek.  You might never look at me the same way again.”

“Stiles.”  He cups Stiles’ face, brings him back so they can look at each other.  “I see the way you look at me when I wince, when I get a headache and I have to lie down.  I see the pity and the dread and the fear.  One day, I’m going to wake up and crawl out of my own body and—be dead.  And it won’t matter then, none of it.”

Stiles sits up, crossing his legs, and Derek does the same, holding onto Stiles’ hands when he loses his balance slightly.

“I was eight when my mom passed away,” he begins, looking down at their hands.  “It hit me and my dad really hard.  He was a cop, the Sheriff actually, and so he had to go on pretending like nothing was wrong.  That’s what people did back then when we faced death; we had to move on.  So.”  He clears his throat, and Derek doesn’t speak.  Stiles knows he’s being patient, but it’s also just comforting.  “It was a tough few years after that.  My dad was drinking and his job was suffering and everything was complicated.  He got better when I was in high school, started working a little harder to make life more bearable.”

Stiles hasn’t told this story ever.  He thinks about it a lot, all the time really, but he’s never said all of it out loud.  So when tears start to bubble up, he laughs bitterly and wipes them away.

“He was killed on duty,” Stiles continues, “and when they told me, I was so fucking lost and broken I—”   He shakes his head.  “I crawled into my parents’ bed and I cried for a long time and prayed for it not to be true, and then I got up and took a shower, went into the medicine cabinet and took—all of it, basically, everything that was in there.  I watched when they found my body.  I was so confused because it was supposed to all be over; I was supposed to be done with it all, and my punishment instead was eternity.”

“Stiles,” Derek says softly.

He just goes into Derek’s arms silently, letting Derek envelop him in warmth.  He has questions, wants to know if Derek can still love him after everything he’s done, wants to know if Derek truly understands what he’s getting into here, but he can’t say anything.  All he can do is cry into Derek’s shoulder and let his body shake with the sobs.

Ghosts don’t sleep, not really, but there’s an equivalent, a dreamless state of unconsciousness that, once entered, can last for hours—or even days—on end.  It passes the time when necessary, but right now, Stiles just wants to slip into it so that he can feel like he’s sleeping, so that when he wakes up he’s rested and comfortable with Derek in his arms.

He won’t, though, because Derek is holding onto him so tightly that he doesn’t want to miss a moment of it.  So instead, he just squirms even deeper into Derek’s arms and stays there for the rest of the night.

* * *

 

Derek dies on a Saturday.  It really makes the whole thing more depressing because Stiles had been looking forward to that particular Saturday.  In waiting for someone to die, especially someone who’s sick, it can get depressing and so they try to make sure it doesn’t feel like a constant funeral procession.  That Saturday specifically, they were all going to set up in the backyard and use Derek’s fancy projector thing to watch a movie on the back of the house.

(Derek had spent a lot of his money on big, expensive things.  He didn’t have any family to leave his leftover money to, and although they have a fair amount buried just for various Halloweens to come if there’s something they absolutely need, Derek has left everything else to various charities, and that’s the end of it.)

Stiles cries a little bit when they bury his body.  He can’t help feeling like he’s lost something, even though Derek is standing right next to him the whole time.

“It’s okay,” Derek says, tears in his own eyes as they stand looking at the grave.  “It’s—thank you.”

“How’s your head feel?”

Derek grins.  “Better.  Nothing hurts now.”

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings include:
> 
> Murder  
> Violence  
> Threats  
> Physical and mental abuse  
> Mentions of rape, although none explicitly drawn out  
> All major characters are dead at the end of the story
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> (title taken from Florence & The Machine's "Leave My Body)


End file.
